Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Census Report on Delayed Childbirth
The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) relays a Census Bureau report on a "Delayer Boom," that is college-educated women delaying childbirth. Further details from the Census Bureau are available here.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Book Review: Not Quite Adults
As documented on this blog, there has been a lot of writing lately on Emerging Adulthood (EA), in the form of books and newspaper/magazine articles. One of the newer arrivals on the scene is the book Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It's Good for Everyone, written by Oregon State University professor Richard Settersten and Chicago-based writer Barbara Ray.
(The name of Ray's company, Hired Pen, may lead some observers to an erroneous conclusion; far from just mechanically writing up what her clients want her to, Barbara is a substantively knowledgeable commentator on the transition to adulthood. In fact, at my invitation, she appeared via Skype as a guest lecturer in my Texas Tech course on Development in Young Adulthood, last fall.)
Naturally, it was with great eagerness that I awaited the release of Not Quite Adults, and now having finished it, I think it will take its place among the leading contemporary books on emerging adulthood. Written accessibly for the general public (including parents, teachers, and student advisors), but with no lapse in scholarly rigor, the book covers many traditional topics of EA. These include higher education, jobs/careers, relationships/marriage, social contexts (parents and friends), and civic participation, areas in which the authors make several interesting contributions. As I now look back at the pages I annotated, there are many sections that will be helpful for my teaching and research.
The book seeks to weave together a few different threads: research findings from the MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, with which the two authors are affiliated; interviews with young people going through the transition; and advice for such transitioners and their parents. A persistent lens through which the authors present their information is that of social class and inequality. With much of the EA literature slanted towards the college-educated, the book's considerable attention to working-class and lower-income individuals is a welcome development.
Settersten and Ray tackle difficult issues facing young people in recent years' Great Recession and they're not afraid to propound what some might consider counterintuitive ideas. One of the book's more provocative lines of arguments concerns money, debt, and pursuit of higher education. As I wrote in a different venue:
...financial issues likely play a more complex and challenging role for young people of modest economic means who could qualify academically for college, but are reluctant to apply, for fear of getting themselves deep into debt with college-tuition costs. In their new book Not Quite Adults, Richard Settersten and Barbara Ray suggest that the choice of not going to college, as a money-saving strategy, will likely backfire. On pp. 31-33, Settersten and Ray provide statistics on the amount of student debt commonly faced by college graduates and the increment in earnings college degree-holders are likely to receive, compared to their less-educated counterparts.
Another controversial issue on which the authors offer advice is the role of parents in helping their grown children make the transition to adulthood. Parents who seem to go too far in monitoring and acting on behalf of their children have earned the moniker "helicopter parents." A colleague recently shared another term with me for parents who try to clear away all obstacles in their emerging-adult children's way: "lawnmower parents" (or maybe it should be "bulldozer parents").
Settersten and Ray feel parents do have a constructive role to play, but that it should be confined to providing their children with advice and helping them appraise their skills, goals, and options. When parents actually take actions that the emerging-adult children should take for themselves is where the trouble starts (see pp. 176-181). In the past year, I've begun a research program on helicopter parents, which I think will benefit from Settersten and Ray's writings.
The authors also write extensively on young adults' trends toward delayed marriage. In this area, Settersten and Ray dovetail with the 2010 book Red Families v. Blue Families by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, in evaluating the pros and cons of waiting to marry.
In conclusion, Not Quite Adults contributes valuable perspectives to contemporary discussions of the transition to adulthood, and does so in a lively and scholarly manner.
(The name of Ray's company, Hired Pen, may lead some observers to an erroneous conclusion; far from just mechanically writing up what her clients want her to, Barbara is a substantively knowledgeable commentator on the transition to adulthood. In fact, at my invitation, she appeared via Skype as a guest lecturer in my Texas Tech course on Development in Young Adulthood, last fall.)
Naturally, it was with great eagerness that I awaited the release of Not Quite Adults, and now having finished it, I think it will take its place among the leading contemporary books on emerging adulthood. Written accessibly for the general public (including parents, teachers, and student advisors), but with no lapse in scholarly rigor, the book covers many traditional topics of EA. These include higher education, jobs/careers, relationships/marriage, social contexts (parents and friends), and civic participation, areas in which the authors make several interesting contributions. As I now look back at the pages I annotated, there are many sections that will be helpful for my teaching and research.
The book seeks to weave together a few different threads: research findings from the MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, with which the two authors are affiliated; interviews with young people going through the transition; and advice for such transitioners and their parents. A persistent lens through which the authors present their information is that of social class and inequality. With much of the EA literature slanted towards the college-educated, the book's considerable attention to working-class and lower-income individuals is a welcome development.
Settersten and Ray tackle difficult issues facing young people in recent years' Great Recession and they're not afraid to propound what some might consider counterintuitive ideas. One of the book's more provocative lines of arguments concerns money, debt, and pursuit of higher education. As I wrote in a different venue:
...financial issues likely play a more complex and challenging role for young people of modest economic means who could qualify academically for college, but are reluctant to apply, for fear of getting themselves deep into debt with college-tuition costs. In their new book Not Quite Adults, Richard Settersten and Barbara Ray suggest that the choice of not going to college, as a money-saving strategy, will likely backfire. On pp. 31-33, Settersten and Ray provide statistics on the amount of student debt commonly faced by college graduates and the increment in earnings college degree-holders are likely to receive, compared to their less-educated counterparts.
Another controversial issue on which the authors offer advice is the role of parents in helping their grown children make the transition to adulthood. Parents who seem to go too far in monitoring and acting on behalf of their children have earned the moniker "helicopter parents." A colleague recently shared another term with me for parents who try to clear away all obstacles in their emerging-adult children's way: "lawnmower parents" (or maybe it should be "bulldozer parents").
Settersten and Ray feel parents do have a constructive role to play, but that it should be confined to providing their children with advice and helping them appraise their skills, goals, and options. When parents actually take actions that the emerging-adult children should take for themselves is where the trouble starts (see pp. 176-181). In the past year, I've begun a research program on helicopter parents, which I think will benefit from Settersten and Ray's writings.
The authors also write extensively on young adults' trends toward delayed marriage. In this area, Settersten and Ray dovetail with the 2010 book Red Families v. Blue Families by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, in evaluating the pros and cons of waiting to marry.
In conclusion, Not Quite Adults contributes valuable perspectives to contemporary discussions of the transition to adulthood, and does so in a lively and scholarly manner.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Job Training for Careers Requiring More Than High School But Less than College
Lauren Moore, blogging back in February at The Future of Children website, discusses the need for the U.S. to prepare millions of young people for jobs that require something more than a high school diploma, but not necessarily a college bachelor's degree (there are also, of course, millions of future jobs that will require a bachelor's degree).
Moore alludes in her posting to a Harvard Graduate School of Education report that "recommends identifying career fields of interest early on, and then creating pathways by which students can learn the skills they need to succeed in those occupations, some of which involve a bachelor's degree and some of which do not."
In this way, the posting reminds me of the distinction between American and European systems of transitioning young people from education to occupations. As Jeff Arnett writes in his 2004 book Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties, "In most European countries, young people separate into different schools by age 14 or 15, with some entering schools that will prepare them for college and others entering schools that will prepare them for a trade, such as electronics or auto mechanics" (p. 132).
Arnett discusses the pros and cons of the American and European systems. Essentially, these boil down to the European system promoting focus and occupational progress, but at the cost of requiring individuals to choose their educational/occupational life path at a very early age (with it being very difficult to change course down the line). The American system, by not requiring early focus and commitment, allows for exploration (potentially good), but with the possibility of such exploration transforming into floundering.
Moore alludes in her posting to a Harvard Graduate School of Education report that "recommends identifying career fields of interest early on, and then creating pathways by which students can learn the skills they need to succeed in those occupations, some of which involve a bachelor's degree and some of which do not."
In this way, the posting reminds me of the distinction between American and European systems of transitioning young people from education to occupations. As Jeff Arnett writes in his 2004 book Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties, "In most European countries, young people separate into different schools by age 14 or 15, with some entering schools that will prepare them for college and others entering schools that will prepare them for a trade, such as electronics or auto mechanics" (p. 132).
Arnett discusses the pros and cons of the American and European systems. Essentially, these boil down to the European system promoting focus and occupational progress, but at the cost of requiring individuals to choose their educational/occupational life path at a very early age (with it being very difficult to change course down the line). The American system, by not requiring early focus and commitment, allows for exploration (potentially good), but with the possibility of such exploration transforming into floundering.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Jeff Arnett Discusses Economic Issues
Jeff Arnett discusses the fate of emerging adults in the persistently tough U.S. economy.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Book Announcement: Romantic Relationships in Emerging Adulthood
I contributed one of the opening chapters, providing background information on Emerging Adulthood and its possible links to romantic-relationship development.
Other chapters cover a variety of topics, including relationship initiation, family-of-origin influences, sexuality, cohabitation, and relationship education. There are also chapters on methodological and statistical approaches to studying close relationships, such as the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Book Review: Urban Tribes
I recently finished reading Ethan Watters's 2003 book Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family? I had known about the book for several years and, in retrospect, I wished I had read it earlier, as I found it extremely relevant to the study of Emerging Adulthood. The book grew out of a 2001 New York Times magazine piece by Watters, and the voluminous e-mails he received in response to the article (and other media appearances) from fellow tribe-practitioners around the world.
Urban Tribes are groups of friends, each member of which is usually single or in a dating relationship (in fact, a major theme Watters explores in the book is whether tribe membership helps or hinders one's prospects of getting married or establishing similar long-term relationships). There is great variation in group size, although 50 seemed like a typical number. Agewise, the twenties through forties would commonly define the range of tribe members. A term Watters uses that describes many tribe participants in a manner akin to Emerging Adulthood is Post-College/Pre-Family.
Emerging Adulthood-relevant passages just jump off the page. Young adults without spouses and children face an "excess of freedom" (p. 9) and "a remarkable amount of personal autonomy to make up our lives as we went along" (p. 27). Many live in a "world of confused roles, time lines, and expectations" (p. 9). Some had a feeling of having "delayed becoming an adult" (p. 21) and that it was "Perhaps... time to move on and become a real adult" (p. 23).
The activities tribes engage in can be quite whimsical, such as re-enacting senior proms or taking "elaborate costumed Halloween trips to Vegas" (p. 37). On the other hand, tribe members also did things that represented deep levels of commitment and caring for each other. As Watters describes:
"My group of friends also came together to tackle group projects such as painting a living room, critiquing someone's rough cut of a documentary, or caring for someone who had fallen ill. We moved each other's furniture, talked each other through breakups, and attended each other's parents' funerals. Those who had money loaned it to those who didn't. Everything we owned, from books to tools to furniture to cars, was shared, or loaned or given away on an ongoing basis..." (p. 37). It is these latter acts that led Watters to hypothesize that much of what goes on in tribes of friends might have the significance of what family members do for each other (see discussion on pp. 38-39).
Another key issue is the longevity of tribes. Although people come and go, the core members of some groups sometimes stay together for 15-20 years or longer. The closest example of an Urban Tribe that I could personally relate to was the collection of friends one of my Texas Tech faculty colleagues established as a single, new assistant professor upon her arrival to Lubbock. She and several of her friends and neighbors -- a ballet instructor, a research associate, and several faculty members -- would, among other activities, gather at her house for periodic parties. At one, people had to wear nametags on which their names were preceded by self-descriptive adjectives starting with the same letter (e.g., I was "Affable, Analytic Alan"). After I finished reading Urban Tribes, I asked my colleague if she considered her group to be such a tribe. She replied that, in addition to the parties, her group hung out at a local coffee house and so, to some extent, could be considered a tribe. However, many of the members moved away from Lubbock after a year or two, so the long-term continuity wasn't there.
One last thing I wanted to mention is that Watters reviews several areas of academic research and how they might relate to the phenomenon of Urban Tribes, such as network theory, social identity, and civic engagement (i.e., "Bowling Alone"). These connections would presumably increase the interest level of the book for social scientists, but absolutely no academic training in sociology or other related fields is required to enjoy the book.
Urban Tribes are groups of friends, each member of which is usually single or in a dating relationship (in fact, a major theme Watters explores in the book is whether tribe membership helps or hinders one's prospects of getting married or establishing similar long-term relationships). There is great variation in group size, although 50 seemed like a typical number. Agewise, the twenties through forties would commonly define the range of tribe members. A term Watters uses that describes many tribe participants in a manner akin to Emerging Adulthood is Post-College/Pre-Family.
Emerging Adulthood-relevant passages just jump off the page. Young adults without spouses and children face an "excess of freedom" (p. 9) and "a remarkable amount of personal autonomy to make up our lives as we went along" (p. 27). Many live in a "world of confused roles, time lines, and expectations" (p. 9). Some had a feeling of having "delayed becoming an adult" (p. 21) and that it was "Perhaps... time to move on and become a real adult" (p. 23).
The activities tribes engage in can be quite whimsical, such as re-enacting senior proms or taking "elaborate costumed Halloween trips to Vegas" (p. 37). On the other hand, tribe members also did things that represented deep levels of commitment and caring for each other. As Watters describes:
"My group of friends also came together to tackle group projects such as painting a living room, critiquing someone's rough cut of a documentary, or caring for someone who had fallen ill. We moved each other's furniture, talked each other through breakups, and attended each other's parents' funerals. Those who had money loaned it to those who didn't. Everything we owned, from books to tools to furniture to cars, was shared, or loaned or given away on an ongoing basis..." (p. 37). It is these latter acts that led Watters to hypothesize that much of what goes on in tribes of friends might have the significance of what family members do for each other (see discussion on pp. 38-39).
Another key issue is the longevity of tribes. Although people come and go, the core members of some groups sometimes stay together for 15-20 years or longer. The closest example of an Urban Tribe that I could personally relate to was the collection of friends one of my Texas Tech faculty colleagues established as a single, new assistant professor upon her arrival to Lubbock. She and several of her friends and neighbors -- a ballet instructor, a research associate, and several faculty members -- would, among other activities, gather at her house for periodic parties. At one, people had to wear nametags on which their names were preceded by self-descriptive adjectives starting with the same letter (e.g., I was "Affable, Analytic Alan"). After I finished reading Urban Tribes, I asked my colleague if she considered her group to be such a tribe. She replied that, in addition to the parties, her group hung out at a local coffee house and so, to some extent, could be considered a tribe. However, many of the members moved away from Lubbock after a year or two, so the long-term continuity wasn't there.
One last thing I wanted to mention is that Watters reviews several areas of academic research and how they might relate to the phenomenon of Urban Tribes, such as network theory, social identity, and civic engagement (i.e., "Bowling Alone"). These connections would presumably increase the interest level of the book for social scientists, but absolutely no academic training in sociology or other related fields is required to enjoy the book.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Seeking Young People's Stories About the Great Recession
Barbara Ray and colleagues are seeking young people's stories about transitioning to adulthood during the Great Recession of the past couple of years, for a book/documentary project. This project, studying whom the authors refer to as "Generation R," can be accessed by clicking here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)